Rendering LCD Panels/Screens in Alias

[apok01]

I am rendering a backlit LCD panel for a consumer product. Basically, I have modeled a rectangular box in the shape of the LCD panel. I have applied the (blue) backlight colors to the base and side of the box with the appropriate glow. I have modeled the LCD graphics onto another surface the same size as the base and positioned it there in place. I have made the top surface of the LCD screen a clear plastic color with lots of reflectivity. I am shining a spot light partially across the LCD surface in an attempt to light glair one area of the LCD panel. The rendered effect of these modeling operations within the product design produces a reasnoble LCD screen effect except for the reflective panel surface which is what I am having problems with.

Does anybody know what shader, map and light settings can be applied to produce a glair or strong translucent reflection across an LCD panel to make it look photo-realistic ?

Any help here would be greatly appreciated, Thanks!

[bmcaff]

It sounds like you need to add a reflection map or try to raytrace refect a self illuminated plane. To acheive it using spot light alone is vvery difficult and would involve aiming the spot light at the screen so it would reflect into the camera (so the spot would have to be on the opposite side of the product whih acts as a mirror). By using a reflection map you can get a more controllable effect without altering your lighting setup.

The material setup here is also very important. You say you are using alot of reflection, but lcd screen plastic is shiny but not very reflective. It tends to reflect similar to glass, i.e. it only reflects very bright light sources or objects and is transparent or non reflective for darker objects. Now in Maya (mental ray) or most new rendering systems you can use HDRI to get great refelection but in Studio tools you can't. Luckily Alias is not restricted to 0-1 RGB range for textures and reflections. This means that you can make you own fake HDRs. Ok, it won

[apok01]

Hi bmcaff,

First off, I want to thank you for providing this method. I would like to know.. I have set up the black blinn shader and it's components (map, ramp etc.) and have positioned the spherical projection over the screen.

I guess this 'blinn shader with black colour' should be applied to the screen surface (top face of rectangle representing screen in model). Is there some other shader that this 'blinn shader with black colour' should be applied through ? Like under the reflection map of a clear plastic shader for the screen surface. Should this 'blinn shader with black colour' be part of a stacked shader for the screen ? Am I completely missing the point here..should this 'blinn shader with black colour' be applied to the reflection card and then reflected onto the screen surface using some kind of light ? (what kind of light is appropriate here?). Once again, thanks for the help, I would appreciate any more advice you could offer!

[bmcaff]

Ok, sorry I didn't clarify. The Blinn shader I described is for the plastic screen cover only. The model should be set up in a way that the base screen and the cover are different surfaces and the blue glow/lcd text shaders are aplied to the lower surface and the Plastic/glass blinn shader (as I described) is applied to the top surface.

The light card only needs a simple lambert shader with incandescence set to about 3. No lighting is needed as the card is now self illuminated and will show up as a bright streak in the reflection. The placing of the card in the scene is important and you will have to use trial and error to get it right. Generally, you make it big and place it above the model and then move it about until the reflection covers about half the screen.

[apok01]

I am using a light card in conjunction with several lights in a scene. Does anybody know (especially you Brendan, LOL!) how to make a light card invisible to other lights in a scene so that the light card only lights the particular surface it was setup to affect and so the lights can shine through the light card as though it was not there. I have tried scaling and positioning the light card and lights around one another, so their beams do not affect one another, but it's just too difficult.

Any solutions would be greatly appreciated.

[bmcaff]

Er.. that was a bit tricky to understand but I think this is what you need.

To make the Lightcards invisible to other lights (I presume this means they block the light by casting shadows) you can turn off shadows in for the cards in render stats.

To exclude them from the reflection of other shaders (eg. glossy/blurred reflection shader), in that shader you select the option to "use reflection map". This will make it reflect the reflection map only and its specular and diffuse will be affected by the real lights.

You can also explore light linking to connect specific lights to only the surfaces you want them to illuminate.

Also a useful option in render stats is "reflect only" which will make it visible to refections only (!!). Can be a good general option as sometimes the card needs to be behind the object (and thus in the view) to get nice reflections. This option will then exclude it from the rendering while keeping the reflection.

I hope this is what you are looking for. If not then maybe post a render/screen shot to explain more.

Good luck!